CARROLL COUNTY, Ga. — The grandfather of a 17-year-old charged with murdering her mother and stepfather in their Carroll County home says she wasn’t capable of the crime.
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“I’m not seeing any proof that she did it,” said Dennis Nolan.
His granddaughter, Sarah Grace Patrick, was charged last week with two counts of murder. Investigators say on Feb. 20, she shot to death Kristen and James Brock as they slept in their bed. Patrick lived with the couple in their house on Tyus Carrollton Road. Investigators say the couple’s 5-year-old daughter found the bodies and Patrick called 911.
Nolan said he was unaware of the family owning any guns and that his granddaughter had no experience with firearms.
“I can’t imagine her taking a gun and her firing it as accurately as they say,” he said.
Carroll County sheriff’s investigators have not publicly identified a motive for the shootings or said what led them to charge Patrick. Nolan said an investigator did not share with him what evidence they have against his granddaughter.
“He says she’s the only one who could have done it,” he said.
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He described Patrick as having a good relationship with her mother and stepfather and had no reason to do them harm.
“They had some disagreements, but nothing, nothing serious,” he said. “Nothing big at all.”
On Wednesday, Channel 2 Action News spoke with Krysten Dowda, the niece of James Brock.
She told Channel 2’s Bryan Mims that she had suspected the granddaughter was involved because she said the teen showed no emotion at the funeral. She also doubted Patrick’s claims that she did not hear any gunshots on the night of the murders. However, she said she had seen no warning signs in the days leading up to the shootings.
“Nothing that raised an alarm to me, just a typical teenage girl,” she said. “But (James) had told us multiple times that Sarah was not who we though she was. You don’t see what I see. You don’t live in the home with her.”
However, Nolan said he thinks someone with a dispute with the couple broke into the home and shot them.
“Someone broke in that back door,” he said. “They say there was no forced entry. I can prove that there was.”
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Mims contacted Carroll County spokesperson Ashley Hulsey Thursday for an update on the investigation.
“I don’t have any additional information I can share at this time,” Hulsey said in a text. “We are still working this as an active ongoing case.”
Nolan said he speaks with his granddaughter on the phone every day, trying to comfort her. He describes her as scared and confused.
“Why isn’t anything happening?” he quotes her as saying. “I’m not getting out of here. Don’t leave me here and it hurts to say there’s nothing I can do at this point.”
He said Patrick has been devastated by the deaths of her parents.
“Shocking,” he said. “I just can’t visualize it in my wildest dreams. I can’t see her doing this.”
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